The 1998 "Mechanisms of Toxicity" conference will focus on the molecular mechanisms that sense and respond to toxic insults and which are responsible for the adverse health effects of environmental toxicants. Sessions will highlight research on cellular signaling in response to environmental toxicants with a focus on changes that occur in transcriptional machinery and apoptotic signaling. This conference will also highlight the important role played by genetics as a determinant of the response to environmental toxicants, and will feature novel technologies for detecting genetic polymorphisms and genotoxicants. Special sessions will feature presentations from authoritative leaders in the molecular and biological sciences in both the Opening Session and Conference Address. Outstanding junior investigators will also be identified and given an opportunity to present their research in the Late Breaking Research Session. Each session will be chaired by an expert in the field and will have several invited speakers. Discussion will be an important part of these sessions and will be facilitated by a Discussion Leader. Speakers in the Late Breaking Research session will be selected from the contributed abstracts, with other abstracts presented as posters. The participation of invited speakers in this conference who are experts in many diverse toxicologic disciplines will provide an opportunity for meeting participants to integrate concepts and data from these different disciplines to develop creative and innovative research approaches that will further our understanding of the mechanisms of action of toxic agents. The goal of this conference is to provide a forum for leading experts in the field of toxicology to present cutting edge research from the emerging discipline of molecular toxicology. This Gordon Conference on topics relevant to many toxicology disciplines has met regularly for nearly half a decade. It has continued to be a vital mechanism for dissemination and analysis of new research findings, discussion of controversies in the field, mentoring of junior investigators, and identification of new biological paradigms and research directions.